Introit for Thomas Becket

Prayer for the week *

            Let us all rejoice in the Lord,
            celebrating the festival day in honour of Thomas the Martyr:
            the Angels rejoice in his passion,
            and highly praise the Son of God.
            Rejoice in the Lord, O righteous ones:
            it is right for the upright to praise Him highly.

            Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
            as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, for ever and ever.    
            Amen.

                             Introit for the Feast of Thomas of Canterbury, Liber Usualis

 
These days that follow immediately after Christmas Day, the first seven days of Christmas, shake the cosiness of the over sentimentalised Crib scene.  The sounds of martyrdom and murder disrupt the gentle moo-ings and coo-ings of the nativity.  Boxing Day is also the Feast of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  The potential cost of worshipping and adoring this infant could not be clearer on day two.  If that wasn’t bad enough day four brings screams that cannot be hushed or shut out with the murder of infants, on Holy Innocents’ Day (28^th).  This results from the evil response of a despotic ruler fearing a rival to his power.  If only he knew how much of a rival!

In between we celebrate John the Evangelist (27^th), who gives us the great hymn to the Eternal Word in the prologue to his Gospel, the Christmas Gospel.  John also describes Jesus as the Lamb of God and poignantly has this lamb crucified at the same time as the Paschal Lambs are sacrificed for the Passover festival.  The Word becomes flesh and bleeds for us.  His passion is present at his birth.  The year ends with a commemoration of John Wycliffe (31^st), the reformer who died in 1321.  A grave in my churchyard claims to hold the last descendents of the family that produced him.  He escaped martyrdom by dying and after his death his remains were disinterred and burned.  Arguments over the Word made flesh do not honour him when they turn violent.

Today (29^th) we celebrate another martyr, Thomas Becket, this time murdered in his Cathedral on this day in 1170.  That has a powerful drama to it and affronts our sense of the sacred.  But Becket’s point of principle sounds less clear today.  He argued for the right of clergy to be tried in church courts, to be exempt from state sanction.  We have learnt over recent years just what a bad idea that is.  The temptation to cover up rather than deal with offending clergy has led to some high profile scandals.  All are subject to the same standards and there needs to be openness and transparency in order to maintain confidence and trust.  What was to Becket an issue of church independence from state interference today looks like an appeal for double standards.

Becket was of his time and Henry II was not the easiest man to deal with.  Hugh of Lincoln seems to have managed him better.  For all the question marks hanging over his martyrdom there is something powerful and moving in seeing the current Archbishop praying at the site of the murder of his predecessor.  We live in calmer times, though like all figures in the public eye some elements of his postbag are regularly referred to the police.  Speaking out on social and contentious issues still lays him open to verbal attack from those who would prefer he was silent.  Being a ‘turbulent priest’ almost goes with the prophetic side of the job.

It is the prophetic and the sharing in the passion of Christ that provides the key to joining in with this medieval introit here.  The Latin text for the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, translated here, is taken from the compendium of Gregorian Chant, the Liber Usualis.  It is sung at the beginning of the Evensong commemorating Becket in Canterbury.  Angels rejoice when voice is given to the voiceless, when selfless devotion cries for justice and dedicates itself to proclaiming truth as it is perceived, however unpalatable that might be.  The blood of the martyrs has long been seen as the seed of the church.

© Ian Black 2006

* An edited version of this reflection was published in the Prayer for the Week column in the Church Times on 29^th December 2006